Rod Stewart, 81, appearing on BBC Breakfast to promote ‘Salt and Rope’, an album of sea shanties sung in a cardigan, told the presenter that his spiritual guide, Duncan Cramond, 71, of Clydebank, has for eleven years been receiving teachings from Keanu Reeves. The teachings, according to Stewart, consist chiefly of the revelation that Reeves keeps every carrier bag inside a smaller carrier bag, which is inside a still smaller carrier bag, ‘like a wee Russian dolly, so nothing is ever lost and nothing is ever thrown away.’ Stewart said he has adopted the practice, and that his wife Penny Lancaster has described it as ‘a bit much.’ Cramond, reached at his flat, confirmed the arrangement and said he has never met Reeves in person, only ‘in the way that matters.’
The airing cupboard is described as a cathedral of polythene
Cramond gave a detailed account of the doctrine. Reeves, he said, began the practice after the 1994 film ‘Speed’, when a bag from a Santa Monica grocery store was the only thing between him and an unravelling. ‘He told me that a bag is not a bag, it is a promise,’ said Cramond, adding that Reeves’s airing cupboard in Los Angeles is ‘a cathedral of polythene’ and that once, for Cramond’s 60th, Reeves posted him a single Waitrose bag with no note. Cramond said the bag is now framed in his hall.
“He told me that a bag is not a bag, it is a promise,” said Duncan Cramond, Spiritual Guide to the Unwrapped, of Clydebank.
There are, according to Cramond, 412 bags in the collection, arranged by size and not by shop, and Reeves can tell you which shop a bag came from by the sound it makes. Your correspondent has long held that a man who can identify a Sainsbury’s carrier by its rustle alone is a man to be trusted with the nation’s secrets, and she will not be argued out of this position, which she has held since 1987, when a similar claim was made by a man in a pub in Doncaster, and it proved to be true.
A publicist denies everything and then confirms a bag in a drawer
Reeves’s publicist, Marcia Debenham, issued a statement saying the actor has never met Rod Stewart, has never met Duncan Cramond, has never knowingly kept a carrier bag, and considers the matter closed. Ninety minutes later she issued a second statement confirming that a bag was found in a kitchen drawer during a routine search of the property, and that it is ‘of sentimental value only.’ She declined to say whether it contains a smaller bag.
“Mr Reeves is currently unavailable and always has been,” said Marcia Debenham, Publicist of the Unfolding.
The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, asked to comment on the environmental implications, said the practice reduces Reeves’s household waste by 0.04 per cent, which it described as ‘within the range we would expect from a man of his standing.’ Your correspondent paused at this point to take a small sherry, which she keeps about her person for reasons that have never been satisfactorily explained, and which to-day tasted faintly of regret and old rain.
A wellness retreat asks participants to sit quietly with a bag
A company called Stillwater, based in Frome, has launched ‘The Bag Within’, a five-day retreat in which participants pay £1,400 to sit in a yurt with a bag of their own and ‘let the bag hold what the mouth cannot say.’ The first cohort sold out in an afternoon. One attendee, a 38-year-old procurement manager from Swindon named Fiona Petrie, said she brought a Co-op bag and wept for forty minutes.
“I came with a Sainsbury’s bag and left with a sense of purpose,” said Fiona Petrie, Procurement Manager and Bag Adept, of Swindon.
Stillwater’s founder, Alaric Tunn, said he has not spoken to Reeves and would not presume to. Stewart, asked about the retreat, said he prefers to do his bag work at home, in the shed, with a small whisky. Your correspondent notes the connexion between whisky and bags, and between bags and the void, and between the void and the sort of Tuesday afternoon that makes one wish one had stayed in bed, and she shall not dwell upon it.
The National Trust is said to be interested in the collection
Stewart has announced that he intends to leave his bag collection to the National Trust, which said it is ‘aware of the offer’ and will consider it in the usual way. Cramond is reported to be writing a memoir, provisionally titled ‘The Bag and the Bag Within’, and is seeking a foreword from Reeves. Reeves has not responded. Debenham said he is ‘currently unavailable and always has been.’
“When I die, they will find me, and they will find the bags, and they will not know which is which,” said Rod Stewart, Singer and Bag Keeper, of Essex.
On the BBC Breakfast sofa, Stewart said the practice has changed his life, and that he now keeps his bags in bags in bags, and that when he dies, they will find him, and they will find the bags, and they will not know which is which. The presenter moved to the weather. Your correspondent, who has been writing all this time under the mistaken impression that she was discussing her own mother’s airing cupboard, which contained, until the day she died, a collection of Waitrose bags that no one was permitted to touch, now realises her error. She shall not apologise. The bags were kept, and that was enough. The weather, as ever, is closing in.
